Quotes About Punk

#1. After 'Punk'd,' my company Katalyst did a deal with AOL to produce short-form content for the Web. At that time it was a different game. If you got front-page coverage on any popular website, you could probably get a push.

Ashton Kutcher

#2. I know, it's an unusual mix, punk and cupcakes, but it works for me.

L. H. Cosway

#3. It's really hard to imagine there ever being the kind of impact there was when punk rock happened in the late 70's. I wish there would be one big change like that again, but I don't know if that'll ever happen.

Penelope Spheeris

#4. Because the only thing that punk rock should ever really mean, is not sitting 'round and waiting for the lights to go green

Frank Turner

#5. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery,
Punk, don't flatter me.

J-Ro

#6. Tommy told Sal about the strange white-cloth figure with black stitches that he had found on the front porch.
"Sounds like Pillsbury Doughboy gone punk," Sal said.

Dean Koontz

#7. I hate it when people say I'm not a true punk. I don't go around calling myself punk; I never have. That's what people need to know
it's not me saying that, it's the media. I'm a rocker.

Avril Lavigne

#8. Emo: e-mo 1. A much-maligned, mocked, and misunderstood term for melodic, expressive, and confessional punk rock.

Andy Greenwald

#9. I needed a distraction. A drink, a good tumble, anything - even this sure-to-be- trouble punk show.

Alexandra Martin

#10. I got all A's and was hated for it; I spoke correctly and was called a punk.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#11. I'm not anti-fashion, but I've always had a bit of a punk attitude. That's important, I think. I do my own thing.

Sade Adu

#12. I wanted to sound new and exciting - the punk movement was over with for me.

Edwyn Collins

#13. Punk and all that was just an image that ripped people off. Johnny Rotten's a wanker, and that's all there is to it.

Brian Johnson

#14. CBGB represents a lot to New York City and to underground rock and to new wave and post-punk and whatever. But, you know, it's like tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or something.

Dave Grohl

#15. Punk was a protest against work and against boredom. It was a sign of life, a rant, a scream, a rejection of bourgeois morals. But have things improved since then? Arguably, they've got worse.

Tom Hodgkinson

#16. I think that what's perceived as punk out in shopping malls or in chain stores or on MTV has almost nothing to do with what punk is about.

Jello Biafra

#17. Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.

Stanley Crouch

#18. I had this bad-boy-from-New York vibe going, dressed like a punk rocker with spiky hair.

Robert Downey Jr.

#19. Punk rock seemed to make sense. I was listening to The Clash and I really loved their social messages and they have a great history of fighting racism.

Justin Sane

#20. I hope y'all haven't punk'd me or anything and you're actually calling me a wuss.

Heather Rainier

#21. I've played death metal, punk rock, hardcore, funk ... I've done it all. And all there really is music and at the end of the day, anybody who has a record and puts out a record that's basically the same song 13 times over on one record; to me they're just cheating the fans.

Cristian Machado

#22. I'm embarrassed to reveal that I never went to CBGB's in the '80s. I was never cool enough to be a punk, and I wouldn't have had the stamina, or the discipline, for straight-edge.

Stacey D'Erasmo

#23. I heard 'Get Lucky'; it's just not my taste. It's great what Daft Punk does and the sound quality is great, but that whole disco vibe is not really my thing.

Tiesto

#24. I'd always wanted to make a record with Jim Dickinson, and I'd known about his boys for years, ... He reminded me that when they were 13 or 14 years old they had a punk rock band and I'd called him and wanted to make a record with them then.

John Hiatt

#25. So you do have more fight in you. (Thanatos)
Looks like the devil just hiked his ass up to Alaska to see the snow. C'mon, punk, let's dance. (Zarek)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#26. I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.

Billy Childish

#27. I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk.

Rick Rubin

#28. I've never been a huge prog fan. My background is punk. My background is learning how to play a bar chord and listen to Discharge records when I was a kid.

Justin Broadrick

#29. I'm just starting to scratch the surface of what really makes me happy and it's taken me a while to admit that acting like a little child and being a jerk and a punk is fun.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#30. In my opinion, hip-hop has a lot to do with rock and roll, because at one point it was considered an alternative - edgy, independent. Hip-hop is pots and pans the way that punk is garage. You make something out of nothing.

CeeLo Green

#31. I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

Billy Bragg

#32. Most of the people who call me a sellout were 7 when I was down face-first in the punk trenches.

Henry Rollins

#33. The punk credo was to stand up for your own beliefs and tastes, not bow down to yet another new set of rules. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, indeed.

Billy Idol

#34. Unless you use the vocoder the way Daft Punk use it, it is very limited. When they sing it's almost human. It sounds sexy. I just used it as an effect. It wasn't because I was not able to sing; I'm not a great singer, but I had some hits as a singer, too. It's a nice effect.

Giorgio Moroder

#35. I consider giving her crap about her lack of organizational skills, but decided not to. It took some major balls to be alone with a punk like me.

Katie McGarry

#36. Don't ever trust a punk who lived.

Noah Wareness

#37. I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

Gary Oldman

#38. Punk recognised the fact that the establishment had no room. There's no point in saying you've got the establishment wrong because they hadn't got the establishment wrong, they'd got it absolutely dead on.

John Hurt

#39. I have a karaoke punk band called The Ungrateful Dead, but we don't exist yet.

Eric Andre

#40. I had moments of my actions and words not reflecting who it is I am - if that defines a punk, then yes, absolutely.

Andre Agassi

#41. I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.

Morrissey

#42. I've always worn jewellery but for a time it went out of fashion. Like grungy and punk bands didn't wear jewellery because it was stupid.

Tom Jones

#43. When I was growing up, I fetishised New York City. It was the land of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, it was where Leonard Cohen wrote 'Chelsea Hotel', it was CBGBs and all the punk rock clubs. Artists and musicians lived there, and it was cheap and dangerous.

Moby

#44. Punk ... was more a kind of do-it-yourself, anyone-can-do-it attitude. If you only played two notes on the guitar, you could figure out a way to make a song out of that, and that's what it was all about.

David Byrne

#45. Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.

Lance Loud

#46. What are you doing tonight?" he asked, as soon as I was sitting down.

"Nothing," I said. I had what most people would call a boring social life, a classical holdout in a punk rock world.

E.K. Johnston

#47. You know what's punk rock about marriage? Nothing. You know what's punk rock about marriage? All the puke and shit and piss.

Jenny Offill

#48. I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.

Reggie Watts

#49. It's such a measure of your solidarity with Ed, that when you would give lectures, he would be wearing a tartan tie that matched. And I demanded that outfit, I thought it was so punk - her long skirt, she looked like a Scottish queen, so regal.

Vera Farmiga

#50. Noise has taken the place of punk rock. People who play noise have no real aspirations to being part of the mainstream culture. Punk has been co-opted, and this subterranean noise music and the avant-garde folk scene have replaced it

Thurston Moore

#51. I listen to all kinds of bands. I like rock music, like, male rock bands. I'm more into that instead of female singers. I like Nirvana, Green Day, System Of A Down. I also like punk rock, and I love bands like Coldplay.

Avril Lavigne

#52. When you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

Dave Grohl

#53. Punk's influence on music, movies, art, design and fashion is no longer in doubt. It is used as the measurement for what is cool.

Malcolm McLaren

#54. I'm thinking of remaking 'Psycho' again. Doing a third remake. The idea this time is to really change it - we're talking about doing a punk rocker setting.

Gus Van Sant

#55. The popularity of punk rock was, in effect, due to the fact that it made ugliness beautiful.

Malcolm McLaren

#56. In Fall Out Boy, we were all playing with our pop punk influences, so that was always within that kind of framework.

Patrick Stump

#57. It's all magic to me. Country to punk rock, all of it. Chopin to Kurt Cobain. But it always all comes back to punk for me, because that was the last time, punk rock or grunge rock, was the last time that passion ruled the airwaves.

James Marsters

#58. Your mother is probably right," Dad said. "Social services frowns on drunk ten-year-ols. Besides, when I dropped my drumsticks and puked onstage, it was punk. If you drop your bow and smell like a brewery, it will look gauche. You classical-music people are so snobby that way.

Gayle Forman

#59. There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing.

Greg Ginn

#60. I'd been thinking I'd have to learn how to play really well, but obviously the message of punk was that you just learn three chords in a week and you're away.

Jarvis Cocker

#61. From the beginning, there was so much pressure in the early San Francisco punk scene for everyone to be different than everyone else, to flaunt your intelligence and insights instead of every band sounding alike, like what plagues punk music in particular today.

Jello Biafra

#62. Work It Harder Make It Better
Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger
More Than Ever Hour After
Our Work Is Never Over
-Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, lyrics and music by Daft Punk

Daft Punk

#63. Hey," Lula said to Ranger's man."You want to watch it? I just had my hair done. I don't need plaster in it. Next time just shoot a hole is this punk-ass loser, will you?

Janet Evanovich

#64. Stamp: "Fine Maddy, Whatever. Take your little punk loser to the dance. I don't need you, Maddy. I can ask two dozen, three dozen chicks right now to go with me." Maddy: "Well then," I guess you better start stocking up on corsages.

Rusty Fischer

#65. In reality punk people are usually the gentlest, kindest folks you'll ever know. They're like hippies, only they wear way more black.

Kate Rockland

#66. When I look at it now, the whole punk thing is sort of comedy in a weird way.

Simon Cowell

#67. Now I know I am an intellectual. I saw Malcolm Muggeridge on the television last night, and I understood nearly every word. It all adds up. A bad home, poor diet, not liking punk. I think I will join the library and see what happens.

Sue Townsend

#68. 'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

Iggy Pop

#69. What was punk all about? To me, it was if you really want to do something, go ahead and do it.

Peter Hook

#70. I was really good friends with Matthew Ashman, the guitarist in Bow Wow Wow. He died, unfortunately. He was one of my best friends during my sort of punk period.

Boy George

#71. In high school I was good at math and everybody wanted me to do something with that - mathematics or engineering - which was a nightmare scenario for me. Meeting other artists and going to punk rock shows at that age, there was a feeling of freedom and community that I wanted to partake in.

Laura Owens

#72. Art talk is punk. Let the movie do your speaking for you.

David Denby

#73. I've always loved punk music, so it was really cool to do my first punk song.

Kate Nash

#74. But that's what I love about punk music. It has a sense of humor about itself, doesn't pretend to be something it's not. It's kickass funk with a heavy-metal edge, but with a conscience. Good

Rachel Cohn

#75. At the time, in 1996, an electronic band signing with a major label was something new, at least in France. Daft Punk knew that this meant a marathon of promotion, TV appearances, etc. To protect themselves and to be discrete, they came up with the masks and, three years later, the robot helmets.

Pedro Winter

#76. When I went to record my first album, which should have been a punk album, there was a synthesiser in the control room. I'd never seen one before but they let me have a go on it and I loved it to bits.

Gary Numan

#77. I was just a music lover who wondered what it would sound like if Otis Redding strapped on a guitar and played in a punk band. That's it.

Benjamin Booker

#78. I need punk rock. It's the medicine for me, but it's bitter and sickening. If you don't need it - if you're happy and healthy - run toward that.

Bradford Cox

#79. As I got older, it turned into hardcore punk. I started getting into more aggressive music.

David Pajo

#80. Any parent would have reservations if their kid came home dressed like a skinhead, but mine understood that punk kept me focused on something when so many of my friends were out robbing 7-Elevens.

Daughn Gibson

#81. Looking back on the production of 'Nevermind,' I'm embarrassed by it now. It's closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

Kurt Cobain

#82. When I began to cover songs for YouTube, they all tended to be in the super pop-genre.. as in, smash-hit songs. My writing process was heavily influenced by this - I went from a more heavy punk rock style to straight up sugary-sweet pop.

Alex Goot

#83. There are characters in [punk] that do deliberately go as far as they can in certain kind of taboo areas.

Richard Hell

#84. With the single crossing over to pop radio, it's bringing out new people to the shows. We've got all our metal kids and punk kids who still love us. And then we've got the average joes coming out. We call our fans the 'mixed nuts' because it's all kinds of people out there.

Jacoby Shaddix

#85. You can't really come into a concept record objectively, because you immediately associate it with Yes, stuff from the 1970s that punk rock kicked against, the pretentiousness.

Colin Meloy

#86. I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.

Jello Biafra

#87. Punk allowed women to stop looking feminine. Oh, the relief.

Jo Brand

#88. I was a huge Bowie fan since I was 12 years old. That was the first 'punk' rock I got into in the Seventies. I didn't find out about a lot of the other stuff that was going on, like New York Dolls and Roxy Music, until a lot later.

Buzz Osborne

#89. People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.

Patti Smith

#90. When punk really started to happen, it was a reaction against the disco craze of the time.

Anna Sui

#91. Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s.

Jello Biafra

#92. A lot of people think that punk rock musicians don't know what they're doing.

Travis Barker

#93. When I was younger, I went through a lot of different phases. One day I'd be punk rock, and the next I would be tomboyish, and then I would be really girly. I was so weird. My two best friends and I were just crazy and goofy!

Ashley Benson

#94. When I was a punk teenager, I rebelled because lots of people in Iceland think that foreigners are evil and that if you don't wear woolen hats and eat sheep, you're betraying your heritage.

Bjork

#95. At one time I was a nihilistic punk with a mohican and a ring in my nose. I think in the course of time I'll find a middle ground, but I also carry that sense of responsibility. I'm in a position to defeat stereotypes.

Michelle Shocked

#96. I suppose we all have our quirks." Her gaze travels over my outfit as she says "quirks." I'm in my usual hacker chic outfit I wear on jobs, lots of tight black everything, punk meets goth, short on class and full of sass. Because fuck you, that's why.

J.T. Geissinger

#97. Being 15 and like a punk in the DIY community, basically being with a group of people like no one else, it was the first place to exclude or call out if people were racist, sexist, homophobic or in any way prejudiced.

Babatunde Adebimpe

#98. Punk rock isn't something you grow out of Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of that attitude is 'give us some truth'

Joe Strummer

#99. We don't want to act like adults. Anybody who can stay in a state of adolescence will be much better off later on. Look at people who are working nine-to-five jobs out of college, and look at professional skateboarders or guys in punk bands. See who's having more fun.

Tom DeLonge

#100. Listen, street punk. You're a guy, and you're a couple inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier, and ooh, you're in a gang. But I've survived ten years of Catholic school, and I will cut you off at your knees without a blink. Do you understand?

James Patterson